Please Note: the deadline for Graduate Admissions has been extended to January 8, 2025.
The Department of Italian Studies at UC Berkeley was designed to encourage innovative work that crosses disciplinary boundaries, while grounding students in the fundamentals of Italian literary and cultural traditions from the thirteenth century to the Present.
We treat Italy as a matter of canonical works and questions, a center of gravity in multiple creative media and as a ‘place’ (physical, imaginary, political, economic, etc.) that must be situated multiply, as part of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the rest of the globe.
Among our strengths are:
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Global Dante and medieval studies
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Renaissance studies and the global early modern
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Italian colonialism, decolonial and postcolonial theory
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critical race, diaspora, refugee studies, and migration studies
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fascisms new and old
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literary and cultural theory
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film and media studies
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material texts and the digital humanities
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gender studies and feminist thought (De Lauretis, Cavarero, Dominijanni, Braidotti)
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“Italian Theory” (Gramsci, Agamben, Bifo, Forti, Esposito)
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transnational and regional identity politics
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multilingualism and translation studies
Our department is well-known for our interdisciplinary profile; the innovative, even ground-breaking, contributions of each of our faculty to Italian and other disciplines; and our professional and versatile PhDs. In order to encourage innovative work that crosses disciplinary boundaries, the combined M.A./Ph.D. program requires students to designate one primary and one secondary field. The primary field may be a 200 year period of Italian literature and culture, or a topic studied transhistorically. The secondary field should be chosen from among recognized disciplines.
In addition to tenure-track faculty positions at Vassar, Duke, the University of Texas, Austin, Rutgers University, the Ohio State University, and the University of Arizona, our graduates have gone on to pursue meaningful work in higher education administration, community college instruction, publishing, and developmental editing.
Program Snapshot
Download the Italian Studies Graduate Student Handbook
Download the Division-wide Graduate Student Guide
Download the Graduate Field Guide here.
Specializations
We encourage students to take advantage of related academic programs on the UC Berkeley campus, including the campus-wide Designated Emphases (DE) (in the concurrent PhD program in Medieval Studies, along with DEs in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, Film and Media, Folklore,Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Critical Theory, and others)
Study in Italy
Our graduate students conduct funded research and develop networks abroad with colleagues in Italian universities (the University of Genova; the University of Rome, La Sapienza; the University of Naples, Federico II; the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa).
Funding and Support
All of our MA/PhD students are fully funded. In addition to covering tuition, fees, and health insurance, we offer a minimum of six years of support in the form of generous fellowships, teaching assignments, summer stipends, and support for additional coursework (for instance, intensive summer language study) and/or research and conference travel. Other paid professional development opportunities (as a faculty research assistant or grader, as antiracism coordinator, or as events and social media coordinator) are also available. When serving as graduate student instructors, graduate student instructors are represented by the UAW 2865–a labor union of over 36,000 academic workers across the UC system.
Pedagogical Structure
We are proud of the range of teaching experiences we make available to our graduate students, and of the support they receive as they learn to become dynamic and effective instructors of Italian language and culture. Our celebrated language teaching faculty work at the cutting edge of the discipline, regularly revisiting their pedagogy to match developments in the field and to reflect the diversity of our student body.
Ringrose Lecture Series
The Ringrose Lecture, begun in 1998, features a distinguished scholar in Italian Studies chosen by a committee of UCB graduate students, who also organize and run the event. The lecture is one of many department activities made possible by the generous contributions of Marie G. Ringrose, a UCB alumna (BA 1930). Ringrose guests have included Teresa De Lauretis, Gianni Vattimo, Alessandro Portelli, Suzanne Stewart Steinberg, and Millicent Marcus, among others.
Chair of Italian Culture
The department regularly hosts visiting professors from Italy, who offer graduate seminars and contribute to the intellectual profile of our faculty. The Chair of Italian Culture was established in 1928, thanks entirely to donations made by residents of the San Francisco Bay Area. Holders of the Chair of Italian Culture have included Giorgio Bassani, Ezio Raimondi, Giorgio Agamben, and Adriana Cavarero, among many other distinguished thinkers.